A worker shows a brick made from the ashes of burned old and damaged currency notes. (Photo : www.scmp.com)
Ever wonder where damaged currency notes go?
The country’s damaged currency notes are not put to waste but used to generate electricity in biomass power plants such as one in Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province in east China, Chinanews.com reported.
According to the People's Bank of China, damaged notes with poor anti-counterfeit features have to be destroyed, adding that the notes, which are regarded as the country's business cards, should remain in mint condition to avoid counterfeiting.
"The damaged notes unloaded from the trucks will be burned together with straws after being shredded," Zhu Hongwei, a fuel worker at the plant, said.
Zhu added: "A truck of 30-ton damaged notes can generate about 30,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, which can provide electricity to a family for 30 months if the family needs 100 kilowatt hours of power each month."
"One thousand and eight hundred tons of damaged notes will be burned in a year as five truckloads of them are delivered to the plant every month," said Zhu.
According to the report, biomass power plants prefer the notes to other biomass because the notes have higher heat and lower water content when incinerated, compared to plant and organic materials.
Zhu said that besides generating electricity, the damaged notes can contribute to sustainable development as the ashes of the burned notes can be used to make bricks for construction projects.
The report said that the burning of the damaged notes will continue as the People's Bank of China issued on Nov. 12 the 2015 edition of the 100-yuan bill.
